Wonder Cruise: A heartwarming holiday romance in the 1930s by Bloom Ursula

Author:Bloom, Ursula [Bloom, Ursula]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: historical romance, uplifting, heartwarming, holiday read, love story, 1930s, moving, cruise
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Historical Romance)
Published: 2016-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

I

The ship was under way again.

Ann was left with an impression vivid and lasting of the sun slipping behind the Citta Veccian hills; of clover fields ripely red, and small square houses, chimneyless and almost windowless; of the cedars in the gardens at San Antonio, leaning over the breadfruit and the oranges. But keenest of all was the impression of a new world and a new self, as she had slid down into that crystal clear water, as though into baptism.

It had been altogether wrong, she knew, but she had loved every moment of it. Afterwards she had been desperately ashamed. But now, with the island lying behind them, and Gozo a thin shadow along the horizon, she felt different about it.

Either everything in her life had been wrong, and this was the attitude she should have adopted all along; or everything in her life had been right, and she had now gone completely mad, and would have to pay for her folly. She was on the borderline hesitating between the two ideas.

She felt herself to be a traitor to Cuthbert, and to her father and to all the ethics of her childhood. She wanted to get a grasp of her real feelings. Only to get a real grasp on a pleasure cruise is difficult; there is too much diversion, too much dissipation, too much amusement.

As she went down to dine she met Miss Bright. ‘You are the very person I wanted to see,’ said Miss Bright.

Ann groaned inwardly. Really in so large a ship it was remarkable how you continually ran up against the people you wanted to avoid. And stranger still that in so short a trip there were already so many people whom you were wanting to avoid!

‘I went to the central part of the island,’ said Miss Bright, ‘and it was all so strange, though I must confess a little disappointing.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Mentally Ann told herself, ‘No crypts, and no skeletons! That must have spoilt it!’

‘We saw people who live in caves, wild, savage sort of people, but unfortunately no open coffins. They must be a very healthy race, I think,’ she sighed regretfully.

Ann had little patience with a woman who could scour an island looking for funerals, and less with the monk who had offered his escort.

‘He did his best,’ said Miss Bright, ‘and in the end he asked me for a small donation for his convent. It is funny but I always thought that they had nuns in convents. I do hope that there was nothing promiscuous about him.’

‘I don’t suppose so.’

‘Well, I gave him a little contribution and I trust it has been put to a good use. You never can be too sure, and we certainly never saw the things he said we were going to see.’

The companion-ways were full of people going down to dine. And now she would have to listen to the boastings of the Spinkses, and the complaints of the Duncans that Ethel had not had so

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